Student Cerys Harding, who ‘hated the sun’, has died from skin cancer aged just 21.

Cerys Harding died just four months after being diagnosed with the disease despite always being extra careful to avoid exposure to sunshine.

21-year-old Cerys Harding from Cardiff died of skin cancer

Her devastated mother Beverly described her as an ‘angel’ and ‘a parent’s dream’.

She said: ‘Cerys was so careful. She was the only person on the beach that had a towel over her as well as under her.

‘She was a girl who never ever sat in the sun – she hated the sun. She had dark hair and dark eyes and it didn’t make sense, none of it did. She didn’t use sunbeds or anything like that.’

Miss Harding, who was studying history at Swansea University, celebrated her 21st birthday in November when she was diagnosed with the disease. She had a ‘funny turn’ but ‘didn’t seem really ill’, Mrs Harding said.

‘At the doctor’s, we were told she needed a brain scan but we still weren’t really worried.

‘We then went up to hospital to have the scan and it all snowballed from there,’ added the 50-year-old, from Canton, Cardiff.

Cerys was taken on a final holiday to Paris with her mother and father David – and family came from Australia for Christmas.

‘She told us, “I don’t want everyone crying all over me, I just want to carry on as normal”,’ said her brother Lloyd, 24.